


Talent Scout

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Mutantstuck [20]
Category: Homestuck, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, it's just occurred to me that i don't know who owns X Men, marvelstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:56:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dave gets a letter from a specialty school and figures he might as well check out the offer. What's the worst that could happen?...yeah, maybe Striders shouldn't ask that question.





	1. Chapter 1

**Hal:**

It's not unusual for Dave to be the first one in the kitchen in the morning; you suspect that, on some level, he's still on a schedule that the rest of the household hasn't ever gotten used to. Whether that's "Texas time" or "Bro time" has yet to be determined. You suppose that whichever it is, it's still an improvement over "Dirk time," which includes such lovely activities as chronic insomnia, occasional episodes of executive dysfunction, and showers that are only cut short by whoever's turn it is to hit the cutoff for the main water supply. 

(That sounds like a joke. It's not, unfortunately.) 

You're off topic. This is also not unusual. The entire purpose of this train of thought was to point out that while Dave being down here first thing in the morning is fairly close to normal, he's usually poking around in the cabinets or the fridge, stalling until someone else comes down to help him decide what breakfast is going to be. 

Today, though, he's not doing that. Today Dave is sitting on the counter, legs crossed under him and lap full of the last two weeks' worth of mail that no one else has been going through. He glances up at you for a moment as you make your normal beeline to the coffeemaker, losing his frown for a moment in favor of a grin to go with his, "Hey, Hal. Sugar's already in your cup." 

"You know me so well, brother dearest." Damn. You don't like the way that frown comes right back as soon as he looks back down at the letter he's reading. At least it seems more puzzled than anything else; what, did D get summoned for jury duty again? That's the most baffling decision you can think of...but no, those letters don't come on that quality of paper. "Did one of us get something worth keeping?" 

"Dunno." He holds the paper away from you when you go to snag it; apparently this isn't something you're being invited to weigh in on yet. "Just as a question, are. Uh. Are scholarship scams a thing?" 

"Probably. Can I see it?" Okay, so all you needed to do was ask for permission in order to receive it; he hands the letter over without hesitation.

Quality paper. Thick, textured, when you hold it up to the light you find it's watermarked with an X inside a circle. Seems to be handwritten, so not likely mass-produced—the fact that the writing on the envelope matches what's on the letter bears out that hypothesis. Dark blue ink instead of black; the signature is in a different hand than the body of the letter, possibly even a different ink. That, you can't be sure about without further testing. Salem Center postmark on the envelope; to you, that seems like an odd place to run a scam out of. 

"Uh, Hal?" 

"I'm working on it." You flash Dave your most reassuring smile, and focus on reading the words written on the paper, rather than just examining them.

> _David E. Strider,   
We are pleased to inform you that due to your exceptional academic and extracurricular abilities, you have been selected for consideration for a full scholarship to the prestigious Xavier Academy. While only a percentage of those selected for consideration are deemed fully eligible, we would like to move you to the secondary qualification stage, which includes an in-person interview. _
> 
> _ In the event that you choose to attend the desired interview, please reply to the contact info enclosed. Transportation will be arranged in a follow-up correspondence._

Well, fuck. You read that twice, consider it, and then drop the thick sheet of paper in Dave's lap.

"So?" 

"It's some kind of bullshit." That's your gut feeling, but you're pretty sure it's evidence based, and after a moment spent rubbing your forehead you have a few arguments why. "It's addressed to you, not to a parent or guardian; even if they were confused as to who's technically in charge of you, nobody's going to willingly put a teenager in charge of his own educational choices like this. 'Only a percentage are deemed eligible'—what the fuck does that even _mean_?" 

Dave frowns at the letter, then looks up at you. "So yeah, it's a scam." 

"I didn't say that." And you're immediately ready to play devil's advocate. What in the name of all that's holy is wrong with you, exactly? "They've given you a choice of contact routes; having just an email or just a phone number would make sense if it was a scam, but not _both_ of those _and_ a snail-mail address. Hell, they're not even asking for anything concrete, just a meeting—" 

"Could be trafficking shit." You jump, at Ambrose's voice. Dave, however, does not; evidently he noticed the man leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room before you did. "I vote hard no." 

"This isn't a democracy, Amby." Yes, you know calling him that is the main cause of him visibly cringing. That's exactly why you do it. "The letter's to Dave, not you." 

From the disgusted look he gives you, Ambrose has some shit to say about that. He doesn't, though, just nods at the letter. (Or at Dave. You can't quite tell which.) "Aight, so it's Dave's decision. What's it gonna be, kiddo?" 

"Do I look like I fuckin' know?" Dave rolls his eyes and tosses the paper down onto the counter, hopping down and pulling his phone out to take a picture of it. "I'm gonna see if Wade's answering his texts—" 

"He's not." You make a point of pestering him every day or two, when he's away from Dave. If he hadn't asked you nicely to stop tracking him electronically, you'd be doing that too, but you're nothing if not polite. 

(That's sarcasm.) 

"He's not answering _you_, Hal. Doesn't mean he's gonna ignore me." Dave gives you a sweet smile and brushes past Ambrose and out of the room before you can come up with a comeback to that. 

Ambrose is grinning at you like he's just barely containing a snicker. You glare at him, and pick up the letter to start examining it again.

* * *

**Dave:**

Hal's right; Wade doesn't answer your texts. You understand _why_—he's a goddamn mercenary, for fuck's sake, when he's not here he's usually on some kinda job and of _course_ he ain't gonna be able to answer when he's lying in wait for some scumbag or whatever he's doing this time—but right now is one time that you _really_ wish he was around to weigh in on the situation. 

Dammit. 

At least you're not actually carrying the weight of making a decision on what the fuck to do about this letter yourself. That can fall on D and slash or Ambrose. And maybe Dirk and Hal, if the actual adults get distracted. Which they probably will. 

Unsurprisingly, when you make your way back out of your room and downstairs again, D and Ambrose are distracted—leaning over the counter and arguing over a zoomed-in pic of that damn letter on the latter's laptop. Hal and Dirk are also distracted, but much more quietly, sharing what looks like _your_ laptop to research the same thing. Which leaves you with...

Davepeta (who's sprawled on the floor next to the couch) and Davesprite (curled mostly on top of them, holding the actual item that's got everyone else in a tizzy.) Welp, this probably isn't going to be informative, but at least it'll probably calm you down. 

_Probably_ becomes _definitely_ as soon as you sit down on the floor next to the two of them; both of those touch-starved featherballs are immediately on you, Davesprite snuggling up next to your side and Davepeta just flopping out over your lap, arms and wings dramatically spreading like they're in freefall. You see the flight feathers heading straight for your face just barely in time to shift up a couple chrono-gears and duck your head enough that they don't manage to knock your shades right off your face; while you're in fast time, you reach over and snag the letter out of Davesprite's hand. 

"Hey!" 

"Sorry, but it _does_ have my name on it." You smooth the letter out over Davepeta's stomach, frowning down at it. Despite having been passed around to literally everyone in the room for the half hour you spent going through all possible avenues of contacting Wade, the paper's still only creased in the lines where it was folded to fit in the envelope. That could be a testament to your family getting better at being careful with shit, or it could be about the thickness of the paper itself. (You're betting on the second one.) "You guys figure anything out?" 

"It smells like smoke," Davepeta purrs, wings stirring slightly. "Other than that? Nyah." 

"...smoke." Okay, that could be something. Or not. "What do you guys think?" 

"It's a god damn mess," Davesprite volunteers, spreading one wing to drape it over your shoulders rather than having both folded neatly behind himself. "Like, for you. You're _so_ freaked out, you know that?" 

"Ooh, hmm?" Davepeta rolls their mismatched eyes, ears perking up as they consider you for a second, then nods. "He really is, huh? You sure you're not gonna flip out, bro?" 

"Both of you shush about what I'm thinking, okay?" You roll your eyes right back at the kid sprawled across your lap, reaching down with the arm that's not wrapped around Davesprite's shoulders to flick their nose. (It's necessary to shift back up into fast time to avoid their automatic swipe at your hand; they don't really _mean_ to hurt you, but sometimes those sharp claws extend and it's just safer to dodge.) "Anyway, do y'all think I oughta do the meeting thing? The letter said they wanted an interview." 

"Fuck that shit." Davepeta's ears press flat against their head, and they roll up off your legs in one graceful motion, folding their wings down and leaning back on their hands. "What're they gonna have that you don't already?" 

"Dirk said the school's legit," Davesprite points out. "Like, they're accredited 'n shit, one of those places that's got a hella screening program." 

To you, that statement seems weird. "What kinda criteria, though? Like, you know it's not acedemic shit if they're scouting _me_—" 

"It's DNA." 

"Hey!" That comes out as an indignant squawk; Davepeta just barely leans back in time to avoid the kick Davesprite aims at them. "You don't know that, fucker—" 

"Can you come up with something better? The numbers for how many registered students show mutant shit aren't an _accident_, dude—" 

"Dirk and Hal aren't even done looking all the numbers up, dumbass." 

"They're all there, though. I saw!" 

"How the fuck would you—" 

Okay, time to put an end to this argument. Or at least redirect it back to the first interesting statement. "Wait, back up. DNA? Mutants?" 

Davepeta makes a disgruntled sound, reaching up to smooth their hair down. (It doesn't work. The green-and-orange curls spring back into place as soon as their hand moves on.) "A shitton of Xavier Academy's students're like us." 

"Not _all_ of them," Davesprite points out. 

"Most of 'em! Plus, like, you don't think some of them keep that shit under wraps?" 

"_Nobody_ can keep that under wraps. Why _would_ they?" 

You're, like. Honestly glad that Davesprite sounds so sure of that statement, so confused about the reasoning. Him and Davepeta, they've been through some shit, but at least they didn't end up immersed in the knowledge that a very fucking large subset of humanity is probably never going to see them as human. Unfortunately, that means that both of them are looking at you expectantly, like they think you have any kind of answers whatsoever. 

Well, maybe you have answers, but you don't have the ability to articulate them. Not right now, anyway. But Davesprite accepts your noncommital shrug, and Davepeta follows suit (after a brief attempt to open their mouth for further questioning, curtailed by a wingsmack delivered by Davesprite.) That reminds you... "So you guys think this oughta be a no." 

"_I_ think you should check it out." 

"Hey, bro? What the fuck happened to furry solidarity?" Davepeta finishes off the half-rhetorical question with a whine and a grumble, rolling off your lap and onto the floor to pull a disgusted face in their brother's direction. 

Davesprite blows them a probably-deserved raspberry. "The same thing that happened to it when we were voting on whether or not to teach Neet how to use a ouija board, dumbass—I had an _opinion._" 

"I still say we should have at least _tried_ to teach her—crows are like, _made_ to contact the dead—" 

"Yeah, sure, but why the fuck would you even wa—" 

"Guys? Off topic." Hoo boy. These two share a big chunk of your DNA; you're forced to accept the fact that you are almost certainly like this too. "So it's a no from Davepeta, yes from Davesprite. Dirk? Hal?" ...and they're not paying attention. "_Yo._ I'm taking votes on what I oughta do here?" 

Dirk looks up, blinking like he doesn't know exactly where he is. (He might not.) "The school seems legit, as far as we can dig up. I vote yes." 

"Yeah, of course you would." Hal grimaces. "Everything looks fine, yes, but it _feels_ skeevy. I vote no." 

Dammit. Still tied. "D? Ambrose?" 

"I think the letter's totally fake, so I'm gonna vote yes just so we can go check this shit out and make Amby shut the _fuck_ up—" D has more to say, that's obvious, but before he can say it Ambrose rolls his eyes and steps around (fast but not mutant fast; you don't even feel the familiar tingle of anxiety that even this merely human speed would have triggered a couple months ago) to get behind D, muzzling him into indignant muffled with a hand clamped down over his mouth. 

"Who's gonna shut the fuck up, again? Seems like it's _you_, big bro—" 

D squawks and jerks his head back to smack into Ambrose's chin. That one, you do wince at, but Ambrose was expecting that enough to rock back with the impact and avoid a bloody lip. And to turn loose of D before he decides to try a different, more successful trick. 

If they weren't both grinning, you'd probably just let the voting end, but they are, so... "Ambrose? Thoughts?" 

He just shrugs, laying any fears of another fucking tied vote to rest. "You do what you want, kiddo, but I wanna ride along. Just in case." 

Despite the fact that you can literally run circles around Ambrose in a fight, the fact that he's gonna be this protective of you is...pretty damn reassuring. Even if everything's gonna be completely normal and fine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dave:**

Because on some level you're still not totally sure about this whole situation, you text the phone number provided for Xavier Academy, rather than calling it. The fact that somebody texts you back more or less immediately (somebody who's not a robot; you check against that to the best of your ability) kind of steadies your trust that this isn't some kind of scam. You're not sure if it does the same for Hal or Davepeta—but then again, you're not totally sure that Davepeta actually _has_ any doubts. It's totally possible that they're operating on some mystical feline, avian, or alien wavelength that you're never gonna be able to follow in a million years. 

Which is totally fine. Hey, at least they seem fine with you going against their suggested course of action. Hal is maybe not so fine, but he keeps his mouth shut, so it's all good. Everything's fine, everything's fuckin' _great._

You're just...not comfortable with being in a car without a weapon, is all. Ambrose being right there helps—not as much as having _Wade_ across the seat from you would've helped, but you're focusing on the positive here. (Karkat would have also been a great choice, but last week's text messages made it pretty damn clear that whoever's gonna be interviewing you wants a parent or guardian present, not an foul-mouthed alien teenager whose idea of "subtle" includes a rock to the head of anyone who threatens him. Or you. God, you love Karkat.) 

(You're significantly off topic.)

Anyway. The positive. Right. 

Well, the big, number-one positive here is that nothing bad is gonna happen and that you have no reason for wanting to be armed, but that's a lil' more logical then your brain and nervous system (emphasis on _nervous_—okay that's not really funny actually) are prepared to process right now. So maybe look at the little positives—you've got your phone, so Hal and Dirk are basically right here with you in case anything _does_ happen. Ambrose is more literally right here, although you do kinda wish the dumbass would put his seatbelt on instead of lounging across a seat and a half like the poster boy for a garage rock band. A somewhat slutty garage band. You're seriously questioning why he made the decision to wear what has to be the tightest black jeans that he owns along with a shirt that's got something close to a scoop neck...actually, the latter part makes sense, almost. It makes the collar around his neck look almost like a fashion statement instead of anything else. 

...yeah, that's probably it. 

"Ambrose?" 

"Yep." 

"Put your fuckin' seat belt on before I start thinking about what's gonna happen if you don't." 

If you hadn't added the second half of that sentence, he probably would've given you at least a couple minutes worth of shit. As it is, all he does is mumble something vaguely irritated at you and grab for the belt, acting like he doesn't hear the half-muffled laughter from the guy in the front seat. 

(Speaking of the guy in the front seat? You kind of wonder if he got picked because he's got shit in common with the Striders in general. Specifically the whole eyewear thing—like everyone on this side of the family excepting Ambrose, dude's got shades that he hasn't so much as reached for since he knocked on the door and Davepeta invited him into the house. His are either super fuckin' stylish or super fuckin' lame, depending on which category you'd put mirrored, red-tinted sports shades. Right now you're gonna reserve judgement.) 

From the look Ambrose is currently directing at the back of the driver's seat, he's definitely _not_ holding back on the fashion judgement, which is kind of hypocritical for a guy wearing nothing but black. Oh, shit, he's totally gonna say something one of you will regret, you can see him getting ready to open his mouth, you should— 

Even when you're watching Ambrose, you're at least tangentially aware of what's going on in other areas, both inside and outside the car. Like, you're not reading road signs—hell, you probably couldn't say whether there actually _are_ any road signs, honestly—but you're one hundred percent sure that there ain't any cars sharing the road. The _straight_ stretch of road, for at least another half a mile or so. No cars, no downed trees or cows in the fuckin' road, no _nothing_ to cause any kind of issue with the driving. 

Nothing to explain it when the world flips itself head-over-heels with a soundtrack comprised completely of breaking glass and twisting metal. Well, maybe not _completely_, because you head Ambrose shout something that you don't have time to process, before your head bounces off something hard (maybe the ceiling?) and shit goes black and dark.

* * *

Head injuries leave you disoriented even as you heal. That's something you've learned a couple times in your life, but it doesn't really explain the fact that you open your eyes to a snapshot of an upside-down fence above a cloudy sky, close them again because you can't _help_ it, the light hurts like hell. 

Open your eyes and catch two second's worth of what looks like bad animation, the metal of the car warping around you like it's melting. Can't be melting, you'd feel the heat. You gotta let your eyes close again. 

Your ears are ringing, but through that you can hear Ambrose swearing. At least you got some confirmation that he's (to some extent) okay. You catch your name a couple times; apparently, he's not so sure _you're_ okay. 

Turn your head. Open your eyes again, and you see a dark-haired woman crouched where you're pretty damn sure the driver's seat should be (it isn't. Nothing is there. You're hanging upside-down in the back half of the plain grey car that came to pick you up for the interview that you're almost sure ain't gonna happen; everything forward of the backseats is just...gone.) Maybe you make some kind of sound, because she glances over at you for a bare second before she turns her attention back to your bro. 

Shit, there's blood in his hair. You don't know where the hell he's bleeding from, but red shows up really fucking well in dirty blond.

That's not good. 

Then the woman reaches in to snap the release on the collar around Ambrose's neck, and everything abruptly gets worse. Maybe he knows it's not gonna be good, because you see his eyes go wide, see him start to jerk back, but he's not fast enough to stop her from getting ahold of the damn thing and hitting the release. 

_Shit._ You should have been trying to get loose the whole time, and now it's too fucking late—yeah, you can upshift, watch the sparks jump between the tiny gap between the metal and Ambrose's skin. But you can't get the seatbelt loose, you don't have a _fucking_ knife to cut it off, and you can't step up your passage through time enough to make the process of him seizing up from the shitton of voltage Dirk and Hal set the collar up to release if tampered with stop. Slow down, yeah, but that just means you get to see his face twist up in agonizing slow-motion instead of having it over all at once. 

Which...yeah. You can handle a lot of shit, but this is...it's too much. You _can't._

Downshifting is a fucking coward's move, but you do it anyway, and fast enough to send a spark of pain spiraling up between your eyes. Or maybe it's not that pain's spiraling up—you falling is also a damn good hypothesis, because everything is very rapidly going dark and silent again. 

If you were anywhere close to fully conscious right now, you'd probably be thinking something along the lines of _oh...fuck._ But you're not. For the moment at least, you're fuckin' gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Ambrose:**

You're briefly aware of the knowlege that literally every inch of your body hurts. Then a band of fire clamps down around your throat again, and something that weighs roughly as much as the whole goddamn world settles on your chest, and you're not aware of anything anymore.

* * *

For your second try at consciousness, everything _still_ hurts. This is fuckin' bullshit, honestly. The way you can barely get a breath in around the weird tightness in your chest is also bullshit, but the scary kind—you can't fuckin' _breathe_ right, you can just barely hear familiar voices around the dull irregular sound of your own heartbeat. For a couple seconds you can't even remember how to open your eyes. 

Then you finally figure it out. Part of the problem was probably the stickiness of the half-dry blood on your face, to be honest—what the fuck happened? Your current view doesn't help at-fucking-all; the sky looks pretty much the same wherever you are and whatever happened. Lil' bit blurrier than usual, but then again you're guessing you hit your head, right? Why else would there be blood on your face, assuming it's not somebody else's— 

_Shit._ Dave. You still can't totally remember what the fuck happened, but he was in the car, he was with you, where— 

"Ambrose, stay down." That's Hal, somewhere just out of your line of vision. Kid sounds not totally calm, which is kind of a bad sign. His advice is solid, but you ain't planning on taking it. "Hey—fuck, you're still not hearing me, are you—" 

Yeah, you're hearing him. You're hearing him just fine, but _you're_ the adult here, you can do what you fuckin' need to. 

Except you can't, apparently, because even the beginning of your attempt to sit up sends everything spinning and tightens the clamp around your chest. Even if the kid didn't lean in to pin you down with a hand on each shoulder, you'd probably end up flat on your back again anyway. Flat on your back seems like a decent spot to be in. Definitely. For another minute at least...assuming your heart doesn't just toss in the towel. Which it won't. Which it _shouldn't,_ especially if you lie still. 

But. 

"Dave." Ah fuck that hurts. There's probably an explanation for why the fuck your throat feels like you aspirated some battery acid, but fuck if you can think of it right now. Shit, you need to not even try, but your focus is fragmented as fuck right now. "Le' me _up_—" 

"Look, you shouldn't even be _conscious_ right now, let's not move on to being vertical yet, okay?" He hesitates for a moment, then adds, "Do you remember what happened?" 

"Uh." Shit. Think. (You can't think. Closing your eyes leaves you dizzier and no more able to remember shit, and you open them again in one hell of a hurry.) "_Dave._ The fuck is he?" 

Oh, you don't like the look on the kid's face. Hal's less likely to just cover up every ounce of emotion than Dirk is, but he masks shit, of _course_ he fuckin' masks shit, at this point you're pretty sure that's hardwired into Strider genes. Or something. Maybe it's just that all y'all have had horrible, horrible luck with avoiding traumatic shit in the course of your lives. God fucking dammit you're distracted again, distracted and in pain and fucking _terrified_ at the way that Hal winces and struggles for a half-second to get his face under enough control that he'll be able to tell you a lie instead of the answer to your god damn question. 

"Dave's fine. Stay _down._" 

Yeah, sure he is. "Fuckin' liar. How bad?" 

"...we're not sure." 

"Hal—" 

"I'm _serious_—I don't know, okay?" Ah, god, you never wanted to see your nephew's face twist up with that much fear and worry. You never wanted to see him swallow hard and take one hand off your shoulder for just long enough to rake through his spiky white hair, composing himself enough that he can keep talking. Maybe he can keep talking. "We—Dirk, Dirk's going to track his phone. As soon as he gets the signal—it'll be fine. It'll be _fine._" 

The electric registers buzzing around the emphasis he's putting on words is a big tipoff that it _ain't_ gonna be fine. 

Shit. 

_Shit._

You should be forcing yourself to talk Hal into letting you up right about now. Instead, you just...groan and let your head thump back down against the ground and close your eyes, and never mind if the darkness inside your head is both painful and nasueating.

* * *

**Dirk:**

Hal moves quick and silent, careful to stay out of your peripheral vision. You still feel when he steps up behind you; even with most of your attention laser-focused in on the screen of the computer you have balanced on what's left of the car Dave, Ambrose, and the driver whose name you never did get left in, his proximity tugs at you like current through wires too thin to really carry it, like he's rearranging the filaments of your mind into something more orderly, more efficient.

God, you wish he could actually do that. It'd probably help with the panic. 

But Hal can't calm you, and you have no idea how to calm him other than the obvious (and useless) option: acting like nothing is wrong. Giving him a status report. Except you can't do _that_ either; what comes out of your mouth is the exact opposite. "How is he?" 

"Better. Breathing." (Because when you came out of Roxy's portal, Ambrose was very much not doing that.) "I think he passed out again. I'm monitoring his heart rate—it's evening out from the last two times he woke up." 

"Is he any more coherent?" You had to walk away after the second time your uncle opened his eyes and struggled to ask you questions that you could only guess at the meaning of, let alone the answers to. Ostensibly, it was because you needed to coordinate Roxy's third jump—back from the hospital she'd taken the driver to, in that two-minute interval where Ambrose wasn't breathing, didn't have a heartbeat that you or Hal or the smartwatch around his wrist could discern, in those two minutes when you were _sure_ he was dead from the repeated shocks the collar (the collar _you_ designed, and never mind that you don't understand how it could malfunction this badly) delivered too close to his spinal cord, the base of his brain—but if you're being honest? 

You were panicking. You _are_ panicking. You can't be panicking.

You need to hear Hal tell you that Ambrose remembered something. 

"He's talking," your brother says, which is good, that's good, and "He doesn't remember anything." 

Fuck. That's not good. 

"Dirk?" 

"Yeah." 

"He asked about—" 

"Yeah. Dave." No, you didn't hear anything Ambrose said—technically he's within earshot, but when you're concentrating everything else fades away—but really, is there anything else he's going to ask about? "I'm working on it." 

Behind you, Hal sighs, and you can't help but flinch as he leans over you, chin brushing your shoulder. The fact that a spark of electricity arcs between the two of you is his fault. His. You can't be panicking badly enough for that. You _can't._ "...'working on it.'" 

It's not an accusation. You have to stop and remind yourself of that before you open your mouth. 

"I can't track his phone." 

"What do you _mean_ you can't track his—" 

"Stop." You understand why he's asking, you understand the tone—the two of you have bugged literally every piece of electronics that's passed through the house in the last three years (including Wade's, although so far he's neutralized every tracker you've put in his shit within a week of it being planted. Either that, or he changes phones that often.) "I'm getting a ping every three minutes, forty-seven seconds." 

"Just one?" 

"Yeah. His phone's—" 

"Rebooting. Why the fuck is it doing that? How many—" 

"Rounds are we on?" You tap the corner of your screen not occupied by the map with possible courses plotted in red. "Nine and counting. He's still moving, but even if he wasn't—" 

"I can't phase into his phone when it's continuously rebooting." Hal pulls away from your shoulder abruptly enough that you force yourself to pull your eyes away from your screen and make sure he's all right. From the look on his face and the way he's tugging at his hair with one hand, he really isn't, but you don't know how to fix it. "Dirk." 

You know what he needs to hear. "It'll be okay. We'll get him back." 

And he knows what you need to hear, because he nods and repeats it back to you. "It'll be okay. We'll get him back...I'm calling Roxy to bring D." 

"Yeah. I'm...going to keep working on this." You flip a hand at him, turn back to your laptop, and start repeating those seven words under your breath. 

_It'll be okay. We'll get Dave back._

God, you wish you believed it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Dave:**

The most irritating part of head injuries is probably that, eighty percent of the time, you have no idea what the hell knocked you out in the first place. Take right now, for example—your head hurts, not much else hurts, so you know that your handy-dandy healing factor's hard at work repairing what's probably a concussion or some shit, but that's pretty much all you know. You can't remember _shit._

Okay, that's not quite true. The short-term memory's right there, you know it is, it almost always is, you just can' t quite access it right this second. A lot like vision, probably, because you can't see shit either...wait, no. You just got your eyes closed. Of course you do. 

_So open them, dumbass. It's not rocket science._

True, but it sure feels like it at this point. The fact that you do manage it proves that you're as much of a goddamn genius as Hal 'n Dirk are, and your brain rewards you by _not_ putting you in extreme pain as soon as you crack your eyelids open. The lower light level probably helps on that one, though; whoever the fuck the woman leaning over you is, she obviously has some experience with head injuries. 

Huh. Did you lose a bigger chunk of your memory than usual, or do you legit not know her? If it's the former, you probably have a major problem...eh, don't worry about that right now. How about you sit up instead? 

"Whoa, whoa, how about no?" Her eyes widen as she leans forward to pin you down, and you get super distracted for a second because you've literally never seen eyes that pretty—like, part of it might be that you've never been this close to anyone with brown eyes before, but you don't think that irises flecked with gold and ringed with even darker brown are standard issue. Like holy shit that's in the top five most fascinating eye colors that you've ever seen in your life, and you're part of a family whose mutation shows up in their eyes. You've spent a decent amount of your time staring at a fucking _alien_, for fuck's sake, and hers measure up to _that_ pretty fucking well. 

"Dave?" 

Oh. Shit. That's not the first time she's said your name, is it. "Yeah, I'm still here." Hard to be otherwise, what with her palm pressed flat against your chest. You kind of can't believe she's capable of holding you down this easily, although part of that might have to do with the fact that you haven't really gotten around to trying to get up. Maybe you should do that now. 

...nope, that'd be a no go. She really is strong. She— 

_—reached past you and touched the collar around Ambrose's throat, found the catch and—_

Shit. No. _Shit._ Strong as she is, the surge of horror and outrage that the return of your short-term memory gives you is apparently a little more than she can handle. Either that, or she recognizes that you're probably gonna end up hurting her (or yourself) unless she gets her _fucking_ hands off you. 

You only really realize you're on a bed when you scramble past her and off of it. And no, you don't really correct for the drop; your hands end up between you and the floor thanks to muscle memory from every other time you've almost faceplanted, but that just means that you don't break your dumbass face. You're still hella off balance, enough that it seems easier to let yourself collapse all the way onto the floor and roll onto your side instead of trying to save any shred of dignity you might have left. 

Dignity. Why the fuck would you give a shit about dignity right now? Ambrose...

Yeah. He's probably dead. Hal and Dirk, they rigged the collar before they put it on him, back in the facility y'all found him in, before everything got clarified, and they didn't trust him enough to _un_rig it, in the first couple months, and after? How the fuck would they remember after? Your family has issues with remembering to adjust shit sometimes, and even if this is something potentially lethal, you can just barely hold onto the hope that this lil' feature was the exception to the rule. 

But. 

You can hold onto it. You gotta. So you push yourself up off the floor—and bang into the woman as she kneels to lean over you and check if you just died or not. The impact's centered on the top of your head, adding a second impact to the one from the car; you're not sure where you hit her, but from the yelp she lets out? It hurt. 

Not that you're gonna apologize. This is a room in somebody's house or something, not a fuckin' hospital or anywhere else reasonable to take someone as injured as yourself, and anyway why the fuck would somebody who's not a paramedic or directly related to you move you? The car wasn't gonna explode. Hell, the gas tank wasn't even in the part you were in anymore, right? 

Okay so maybe you're still having memory issues from the knock on the head, because there is no fucking way that you're remembering that right. There was no reason for the car to be in two halves. That can't be right. Why would— 

The woman whose name you still haven't even tried to get reaches for you, and you—completely on panic-induced autopilot at this point because of _course_ you are, you get fuckin' _dangerous_ when you're this close to the tipover point for an honest to god meltdown—you grab her wrist and bear down, twist until she yelps again and lets herself be turned so her back's to you. Oddly enough, the ease with which you get the upper hand doesn't really help your mental state at all. Nope, you're still kneeling on unfamiliar carpeted floor, breathing even and barely a little bit fast because hyperventilating'll put you in more danger than you already are, trying really _really_ hard to think yourself down from this shit. 

Letting her go would probably help, but you can't actually seem to do that right now. Deliberately closing your eyes is a poor second choice, but it's the best one you have right this second. You need to calm down, you need to _not_ snap this woman's arm like a stick, you need to get ahold of how fuckin' scared you are—

"Julia," an unfamiliar male voice says dryly, "you seem to have lost the advantage here." 

"Oh, you _think_?" Okay, so she's nowhere near as unnerved by this whole situation as you are, which is almost weird considering that she's the one in danger of getting injured right now. Then again, maybe she's just got more confidence in your ability to control yourself than you do. 

"Dave." A hand touches your shoulder, and you flinch back (drawing a pained noise from poor Julia) and open your eyes. 

Well, you don't recognise this dude at all. He's old enough that you don't feel even a tiny ping of guilt over classifying him as "an old dude," seems really fucking tall and probably is even though some of that impression is because you're on the floor and he's leaning over you. Weirdass metal helmet thing that covers up most of his silver-white hair (why the _fuck_ do you actually feel proud that yours is closer to pure white? why, exactly?) A fucking _cape._

What the actual fuck have you ended up in? 

"Dave, do you intend to break her arm, or not?" One silvery eyebrow arches up. "Either way, I suggest you end the stalemate." 

"...'stalemate.'" Yeah, you might be on a different wavelength than this dude right now. Then again, you really don't want to break Julia's arm. She seems nice other than the kidnapping thing, and you're kind of just assuming there _is_ a kidnapping thing. Maybe you're wrong. So yeah, you let go, and Julia huffs and mutters something under her breath and scoots away from you, and you cross your arms because your hands are shaking and glare up at the new dude. Old dude. What-fucking-ever. "Happy now, fucker?" 

Maybe cussing at him isn't the best move, but he doesn't seem as offended as most people would be—all you get from him is a wry smile and an offered hand. You have no fucking clue what to do with the latter. Wait, no, it's probably as simple as him wanting to help you up. Maybe. 

"I'm not touchin' you." Too blunt, but you're rattled. "Who the fuck are you? You know Wade's gonna kill you for this, right?" 

Julia laughs, which is kind of a relief because it sounds genuine and makes you a lil' more sure that you didn't really hurt her but also irritates the _shit_ out of you because it's Wade she's laughing at, dammit, and he might not care if he was here but you do care and you _are_ here—and the old dude shakes his head at her. You don't like how fast she silences herself at that, but it's not like she stays quiet for long. 

"Let him try," she says, and you scowl at her. 

"Fuck off." 

"For a kid, you sure have a potty mouth." 

"Fuck _you._" 

"_Children._ Please." The old guy rubs his forehead like he's got a migraine starting, which isn't exactly an unsurprising developement. Hey, you're pretty sure he's the reason _your_ head hurts, he fuckin' deserves it. "Julia, we brought him here for a r—" 

"I'm not talking to you." 

"...what." 

"You just called me a child, Eric! What did you expect?" She sticks her tongue out at him and crosses her arms over her chest. (You're starting to wonder if you should revise your estimate of her age down a couple years. Sure, she looks somewhere between twenty-something and thirty-something, but she kinda acts like she's fourteen.) "_You_ deal with him." 

"I thought you weren't talking to him, not me," you feel the need to point out. 

"_You_ told me to fuck off." 

Oh good point. But that means you gotta either talk to Eric the weird old helmet dude, or ignore both of them until Roxy shows up to take you home. Then again, how exactly do you even take something like that back? Will just saying _I take it back_ do the job, or do you have to coax her into talking to you again? How would you even start to talk her into it? 

While you're still considering that, shit goes to hell in less time than you would have believed possible. 

By "going to hell," you mean that two _more_ people that you don't know—well, one person in a wheelchair and one guy who looks about as human as Karkat does, just with blue skin instead of grey and a tail that moves like it's prehensile instead of nubby horns—literally appear out of nowhere behind Eric. The whole materializing thing isn't really that alarming—Roxy can do something pretty close, after all—and the blue guy doesn't even register as a threat, even if he gives you a nervous and _very_ sharp-toothed grin for the second you meet his golden eyes. 

The guy in the wheelchair, though...

You don't even get a chance to look at him, really. Which is _stupid,_ you should know better than to assume the one who doesn't look human is the threat, you of all people should know better than this—but beating yourself up over this shit isn't going to do anything. You look at Blue Dude, you don't look at the other guy, you blink and feel someone else behind your eyes. 

Funny. It's funny, that you're always so close to this kind of fear. You'd think it was funny, if you could think of anything but getting away from the other mind sifting through your brain. Not that there's anywhere to go—you're in the corner of the room furthest from the door, and who even knows what's on the other side of that door? Who knows how far this guy's mental influence can reach? 

Not you, that's for sure. But even as freaked out as you are, you _do_ know that you can get him out of your head without moving an inch, with just a lil' mental twist. Takes you way too long to remember how to do it, but you close your eyes and slap your hands over your ears, shift yourself right the fuck out of time until everything around you crawls to a stop and the presence in your head evaporates into nothing. 

Unfortunately, you still can't breathe, can't move, can't see, can't leave—fuck, okay, you're done. You're done. You're so fucking _done._


	5. Chapter 5

**Ambrose:**

Well, you still feel like shit, but you're not dead. Kind of surprising, you know, but you're not here to be fucking predictable. You're not sure why you're here at all, actually—it only took two rounds of you flatly refusing to entertain the idea of going to the hospital for Dirk 'n Hal to give up on it, which ain't anywhere near the normal number. They've compromised by sitting you down next to the remains of the car, telling you not to move, and then having Davesprite perch on the fence next to you and watch you like a hawk. 

(You guess he has enough feathers to make that fitting.) 

No, you're not sure why Davesprite's here. You're not sure he should be here, any more than you should—but then again, Dirk 'n Hal are here, Roxy's here, Sollux is here for some fucking reason, you're here even though you're not totally sure you're capable of protecting anyone from anything. Here is as safe as anywhere else, probably. 

Probably. 

God, you hope wherever Dave is is half as safe. You close your eyes, try not to think about that shit, open them some indefinite length of time later when someone touches your shoulder. 

D. It's your brother, it's D, you have no fucking clue when he got here but you're gonna just. Close your eyes again, not look at the expression of pain and fear and confusion on his face even though that shit's gonna be branded into your mental landscape for roughly ever. Mostly 'cause it's _your_ fault—you didn't protect him, you didn't do _anything_— 

"Ambrose, holy shit." D settles in front of you, both hands cupping your face. From the feeling of his grip shifting, you come to the conclusion that you're mumbling to yourself, plenty loud enough for him to hear. Aw, fuck. "Nothing about this is your fault, bro." 

"Shut up." That, however, is a totally conscious sentence. You're proud of yourself. "I di'n't—" 

"You didn't fucking _die,_ which is good enough for me, okay?" D strokes your cheek with one thumb until you give up and give him what he wants, cracking your eyes open. Shit's kinda blurry and the light hurts; neither of those things are a surprise. The pity on his face kind of is, though. "Hey." 

"Hey." 

"Dirk 'n Hal, they're getting him back right now." 

"Kids said they couldn't get a fix on his phone, D." You know those four, Hal and Roxy and Dirk and Sollux—alone, they're each a fucking genius, but if they're working together (which they are right now) there shouldn't be a problem that takes more than seven minutes to solve. And you're pretty sure it's been more than ten minutes. Which means— 

Shit. You're too fried to think about what it means. You don't wanna think about what anything means, you're just gonna close your eyes again and—

"Scoot over, D," Davesprite says, and the hands on your face abruptly disappear. You have time to start to feel bad about that; then someone smaller and feathery-er curls beside you, settling across your lap like he's more liquid than solid, more feline than avian, like he's got the power of melting his bones to nothing when he needs to or wants to. 

It's Davesprite. It's your baby, your lil' man because Dave's got hangups over the nickname and Davepeta's gender don't line up quite right with it, and as much as you want to shut down right now the kid in your lap gets priority brain function. Thankfully smoothing down the soft orange down of his wings takes minimal brainpower anyway, which means you still get to tune out. 

For a second, anyway. Then Roxy snaps, "Got him," something (Sollux or Hal) hums and crackles like a snapped powerline, and Davesprite shoots off your lap like a snapped rubber band. 

The only reason you don't open your eyes right off is that one wing hits you in the face. You always kind of wondered if it was true that a swan could break a man's arm with a targeted wing-slap; based on what Davesprite can do accidentally, you're pretty sure that it is. Jesus fucking christ there is blood in your mouth now. 

Never mind that, though. When you get your eyes open Dirk has Davesprite in some kind of wrestling hold (where the hell did he learn that, exactly? You remember teaching that kind of fighting to D when the two of you were teenagers but did he _really_ teach his own kids? Already?) and D's reaching for your shoulder to shake you until you look at him. 

You're not sure where the fuck Rox is. Sollux is absorbed in a laptop, red and blue crackling around his head. Hal's gone, which is actually a good thing. 

"Ambrose," D says in that voice that still surprises you every time—dad voice? Yeah, dad voice— "—stay. Fucking. Here." 

"Dave's—" 

"You almost _died._" 

"I didn't almost die, you overdramatic fuck—" 

"_Ambrose._" 

Fuck. _Fuck._ "It's _Dave_," and god do you sound like you're begging because maybe you _fucking_ are, "D, it's my _kid,_ I gotta—" 

"I'll knock you the fuck out if you try and put yourself in the goddamn line of fire again right now," he warns you, and you can hear his voice waver and not quite break halfway through the sentence—it's not an empty threat, he totally will kick your ass for your own safety right now. "You're staying right fuckin' here with Davesprite, do you understand me? You're—" 

Behind him, Davesprite screeches in obvious outrage at the idea of being left behind, and is abruptly cut off as Dirk flattens one hand over his mouth. You feel like screaming too—there's no way you'll be fast enough to get past D, not with—

Wait.

Thinking about the collar means you reach up to touch the collar, a habit that's firmly ingrained in your mind at this point—except you find tender, painful skin instead. The collar's gone for the moment at least, Dirk or Hal or _somebody_ took it off. 

You're faster than D right now and you knows it. From the way you see him start to open his mouth, he knows you know it, and maybe he could actually do something about it if you gave him time but he doesn't get the time—somewhere just out of your sight, Roxy shouts something wordless and truimphant and you see a flat black void that only exists from one side flicker into existence. 

Dave's on the other side. You roll up to your feet and you're gone before D has time to take a breath.

* * *

**Hal:**

Getting into Dave's phone is...weird. It's still stuck in its restart/reboot cycle for some reason; for a second you're not sure how Roxy and Dirk managed to get a lock on the signal at all. The pings should still be too far apart. 

Ah. Nevermind. Dave's not on normal time, that's all. That means that you can't actually use his phone as a corridor to physically join him in his current location, but that's okay; there's all kinds of shit that you can flow into. If your haste means a couple shattered lightbulbs, who the fuck gives a shit? 

(Yes, that is a direct transcription of your thought process as you literally explode out of the lamp on the stylish bedside table. Maybe there's a little more spite in the action than you're putting into the transcript, but you don't intend to consciously admit that.) 

Okay. Priorities. 

Number one, pick a wall to focus on. Roxy's been practicing lowering the time they need to get a fix and open a portal, but you'll still need to get a steady camera shot for at least thirty seconds or so. Thankfully there's a wall across from you that you can get a clear shot of; you stare for three seconds, blink twice to cut the video and set it to loop, and send it to her. Three seconds is almost too long to stand still, too, because two of the four people in the room who aren't Dave are already heading towards you. 

Since they're the ones providing the overt threat, you assume that the real danger here is from the two who _aren't_ moving towards you. The fact that those two are older bears out that hypothesis; age doesn't always correlate with power, but something about this whole dynamic makes you fairly certain that you're right. Plus, they're on the side of the room that you need to be on anyway—further from the hot chick and the blue dude closing in on you, closer to Dave.

You're worried about Dave. Despite the fact that all signs point to him being faster than the rest of reality, he hasn't moved from his spot on the floor with his hands over his ears since you popped in. Not good. 

So. You should be closer, and everyone else should be incapacitated. Let's fucking _go_.

The bulb's shattered, but power still runs through the lamp; you backstep and melt into the electricity there, dart from socket to wall plug to main light on the other side of the room, quite nearly right above the man in a wheelchair. As tempting as it is to try, you don't shatter this lightbulb (no showering people with mercury-laden fluorescent glass shards, at least not when one of those people is Dave) or to land on anyone's head. (No killing anyone, either. At least not until you figure out how bad off your bro is.) 

So you drop down behind the two men, noting that the blue dude, at least, is already in the middle of whirling to face you. You also notice that he has a goddamn _tail,_ mostly because the arrow-shaped tip is lashing like an angry cat's. Interesting; most people can't track you that well when you're in-system. But you still have a few seconds at least to—

_Shit._ No you don't, because sulphur-yellow eyes lock onto yours and suddenly he's not over there, he's _here,_ inches from you, weirdly proportioned hands gripping a double handful of your shirt. Oh, _shit,_ fuck, shit—

Luckily your main fear reaction is not unlike that of the famed electric eel's. Dark blue fingers only have to _barely_ brush against your skin and he's staggering back with a pained yelp. Still, he's going to grab you again. You need to get shit under control. 

...or maybe you don't, because here comes the cavalry. On the opposite wall, one of Roxy's portals blurs into existence, and it's only open half a second before someone pops through it. 

That someone is moving too fast to be anyone expected. You confirm that it's Ambrose when he misjudges his own speed and slams into the wall; he may have knocked himself out. No, he _definitely_ knocked himself out. 

"Dirk, god_damn_it—" Oh, you probably should be acting instead of speaking, but on the other hand everyone else is currently occupied with staring at the newly-unconsious man on the floor. First stop once you get this sorted is the nearest hospital with an MRI, jesus fucking shit. 

Uh-oh. Blue guy's looking at you. Hell, he doesn't even need to do that weird teleport thing this time, he's close enough to just fucking _pounce._

Fortunately for you, someone slightly more competent than Ambrose decides to use the portal before the guy can actually do anything more than start to turn. The fact that it's Davesprite—a very obviously indignant and pissed-off Davesprite—isn't optimal, but then again no one you've ever met can withstand a hundred pounds of orange feathery mutant to the chest. With the kinetic energy added to his actual mass, it's enough to knock the blue guy off his feet. 

They're both gone before they hit the floor. This is an entirely new level of problem added onto the already-existing one. 

Fuck it. You're sure Dirk and Roxy can help you sort it out once they get their shit together and through that fucking portal.


	6. Chapter 6

**Ambrose:**

Okay, so you've just learned that mutant powers are only kind of like riding a bike. Like, sure, you've been deprived of the ability to do your cool shit for a while and you still totally remember how—like riding a bike—but you may have kinda forgotten how to _stop_ doing it. Or when to stop doing it. Or where. Something like that. 

You probably have a concussion now, on top of whatever neurological damage comes with too much electricity too close to your brainstem. God, the kids are gonna just drop you off at the hospital once all this is over and you won't even be able to argue your way out of it. 

But hey, it's _not_ over yet, so you need to quit your goddamn whining and get your ass up off the floor. 

"Ah—_shit._" Yeah, your first try doesn't really go that well; you get halfway up and go right back down again. Maybe you should put that wall in front of you to good use, right? 

"Oh look, he's alive." (Why the hell does Dirk have to sound so halfway dissatisfied with that.) "Has anyone ever told you that you suck at following simple directions?" 

"I got a head injury, fuck off." It takes you a couple more seconds to steady yourself enough that you feel okay with turning to check out how everyone who isn't you is doing. When you do, you're forced to come to terms with the fact that none of them are really doing that much better than you are. 

Dirk: sword out, back pressed against Hal's close enough that they might be one kid in a mirror rather than two. They're both doing the bladed-weapon version of holding two old dudes at gunpoint; you feel like Hal's got that sword a lil' too close to the throat of the guy in the wheelchair, but then again, you have a head injury. Your bro: struggling to break the headlock the vaguely familiar brunette has him in, with no discernible effect. Davesprite: nowhere to be seen, which is vaguely worrisome because you're ninety percent sure that he came through right after you. Roxy: _also_ nowhere to be seen, but that's barely even a worry; odds are she's back on the other side of her portal keeping an eye on things over there. Or something.

Dave: on the floor with his hands over his ears. _Shit._

You probably shouldn't move as fast as you do; it makes things spin a little bit as you drop to your knees in front of him and reach for his shoulders. The collar's gone so you have to remind yourself to keep the movement of shaking him small and gentle (don't move fast don't hurt him don't _scare_ him) and just enough to get him to open his eyes and see that he's not here alone. 

Which he does, after a second. (Your second. Not his. You don't know how long it is for him.) Dave's eyes open, flick from you to what's behind you back to you too fast to really track; then he shudders under your hands, closes his eyes again and gropes in his jacket pocket for something. 

Doesn't push your hands away, though. Doesn't try to make you let go. So you don't. 

The _something_ that he's digging for turns out to be his phone; you can't even _see_ his fingers as he types something out on it. Maybe half a second after he gets it out of his pocket, D's phone chimes with an incoming text. 

"Let me get that—" 

"Uh, no? No way am I turning you loose—" 

"What the hell do you think I'm gonna do, kill you with my phone? If he's texting me there's a damn good reason—" 

You're starting to think maybe you need to get up and deal with this shit, but then again Dave's actually leaning against you and maybe D can sort shit out himself? Maybe he can come to some kind of agreement with the woman currently holding him against his will? Maybe—yeah, no, you're being a wishful dumbass. Get the fuck up. 

"Julia." 

It's the guy Dirk's threatening who speaks. The one who ain't in a wheelchair, the one with the weirdass headgear. One word, and the woman lets go of your bro like his skin's burning her. 

He almost falls, too, overbalanced from struggling against her grip. There isn't a lot of grace in the way he manages to catch himself, but a little more in the nod he gives her and the mumbled "Thanks," as he fishes his phone out of his pocket to check the message. 

God damn D's slow. "Bro." 

"What?" 

"Gimme." Taking your hands off Dave isn't something you really feel like doing, but you do it anyway in order to make grabby hands at your brother until he rolls his eyes and tosses the phone in an easy underhand arc. 

(Everyone in the room other than Dave tenses up. You guess you should have thought this through a lil' better, but no one actually acts on anything before you catch the damn thing, so you guess it's alright.) 

The text is short and simple and tells you _exactly_ what you need to know; you read the single word out without even thinking about it. "'_Telepath._' Ah, fuck." 

"_Shit._" Dirk's sword actually wavers downwards for a second; you see it happening and feel yourself tense up with the expectation that the man he's holding at swordpoint is going to take advantage of it, that you'll have to _move_ and keep anything bad from happening. 

All that happens is that the man's pale blue eyes flick to you for a fraction of a second and his mouth quirks up in a knowing smile. Hey, what the fuck? 

"I vote for Mister Helmet as the telepath." As soon as you say it you know you're wrong; all three people who aren't related to you make assorted noises of disgust. The woman who was holding D—Julia—is the loudest; you shift Dave to lean against you a lil' differently so you can twist around and glare at her. "Hey, I'm workin' on guesswork and head injuries here; be fuckin' nice." 

At least she has the decency to look ashamed at that, since some of those injuries are definitely her fault. Well, she looks ashamed for maybe ten seconds, anyway. "So you thought _Magneto_ was the telepath? Not, I don't know, Mister X here?" 

"_Professor_," the guy in the wheelchair feels the need to correct her. He's immediately confronted by three sets of glares—yours, Julia's, and Magneto's. It doesn't seem to phase him. "Xavier, not _X_." 

Xavier. Wait, you know that name. 

D beats you to the association, though. "Fuck. You're the one who sent the letter." 

_Fuck._ "Hey, Hal?" 

"Not now, Ambrose." 

"Yes fucking now, actually—get him the fuck out of here before I remember how legs work 'n fuckin' throttle him." 

"That's hardly fair. After all, it certainly wasn't I who waylaid you." 

Helmet douche—no, _Magneto_ scoffs, waving a hand irritably and somehow sending Dirk's sword flying out of his grip and across the room to embed itself point-first in the far wall. You don't think you've ever seen that kind of power up close and personal before. "Your driver was the one who decided to crash the car rather than be taken peacably, Charles." 

"As if you ever intend to do anything peacably." 

"We defend ourselves. And we defend _others_ from _your_ machinations—" 

Okay, no one is taking your threats seriously. "Hey, what part of 'get the fuck out' do you not understand?" 

You don't think you've ever had someone give you as contemptous a look as the telepath favors you with now. Part of the experience does in fact owe itself to the fact he _is_ a telepath—you _feel_ that shit, a wave of his disdain flooding into your brain with enough force to send a new ache up into your already-abused skull. "If you hadn't noticed, my transportation is noticably absent." 

"I don't believe he was conscious long enough to notice Kurt," Magneto points out. It's probably supposed to come across as helpful. You do not find it particularly helpful. 

"I don't give a fuck _where_ you go," you explain as patiently as you feel capable of being (so not very) "but _here_ ain't an option, you dumb motherfucker—Dave ain't comin' back to normal time until there ain't any chance of someone diggin' in his head. So get the _fuck_ out, before I decide to get rid of you some other way." 

Right now, that's kind of an empty threat—you don't think you're gonna win even against a man in a wheelchair. Then again...there's Dirk, and Hal, and D, and probably Julia if you ask her nicely. Professor X either doesn't realize the second part of that, or doesn't care, because he doesn't show any signs whatsoever of moving even when Hal moves his katana a half-inch closer, just barely not touching skin. 

Shit's about to get bloody, you think, and some part of you feels bad about that but the rest of you is pissed enough to welcome it. With that mindset, it's probably a good thing that you're down here on the floor with Dave sitting this shit out, instead of participating directly. 

However, the escalation of the situation pauses abruptly, interrupted by Magneto rolling his eyes and making a single sharp gesture that sends Hal's sword to _thunk_ into the wall beside Dirk's. Both of the twins take that as a cue to dive for the weapons, leaving him with the perfect opening to take two steps to Xavier's side, take his dumbass helmet off, and settle it onto the other man's bald head. 

From the absolutely poisonous look that Xavier's giving him through this whole process, you're guessing this has some deeper meaning than a simple transfer of headwear, but it wholly escapes you. It doesn't escape Dave, though; he inhales a sharp breath, faster than his already sped-up breathing pattern, and his head comes up to focus on the two old men. 

Then he gives himself a lil' shake, looks up at you and blinks twice, and just like that he's back in synch with you again. 

"Dave—" 

Now would be the time to ask if he's okay. Apologize, probably, although what for does escape you at the moment. Dave does not give you time to do either of those things; he drops his phone and lunges for you, arms looping around you and making you wince as he brushes against some of the worse burns at the nape of your neck. 

"Ambrose, holy _shit_—" 

"Kid—" 

"—thought you were dead, jesus fuck, thought they killed you, the collar—" 

Oh yeah, the collar's gone. You're gonna have to ask him what he wants to do about that later, but right now— "Kid, for the love of fuck ease up a lil', alright?" 

"Oh, shit." You didn't really mean for him to let go of you completely, but that's what he does, pulling back to look you over with a fuckton more anxiety than you like in his eyes. "How bad?" 

"Probably not as bad as you." 

"Shut the fuck up, I'm fine already—Hal, how bad is he hurt?" 

Your current position gives you a perfect line of sight to glare at Hal in what you're hoping is an obvious _keep your god damn mouth shut_ way. Either it's not, or he chooses to be a lil' shit. 

"Temporary brain damage and second-degree burns. Don't touch his neck for a while, keep an eye out for any cranial bleeding, he'll be okay." 

"Second degree burns? Ambrose, what the shit?" Dave groans and puts one hand just under your chin to get you to tip your head back. He doesn't actually _touch_ the affected skin, but the movement still makes you grit your teeth to keep from yelping. "Fuck, nobody got first aid shit on him?" 

"We were a lil' occupied," you point out as intelligibly as you can with your head tipped back like this. "That's enough looking, 'kay, Dave? Please?" Yes, you are just about begging right now. 

"Yeah, okay, but I'm gonna make Roxy give us a portal to a hospital." 

"Uh-huh, yeah, sure." Anything to get him to turn you loose. Which he does in another second; you don't miss the look on his face when you wince at how tipping your head forward again changes the stress on the burns. "Kid, 'm not dying." 

"Not currently," Dirk amends, finally wrenching his katana out of the wall. "How about we get the fuck away from these idiots? Show of hands?" 

You raise your hand. Dave groans and raises both hands, which doesn't really surprise you. D raises one hand, frowns, and puts it back down. 

"_What,_ D?" 

"We came here with four kids, not three." 

Ohhhh shit. "Davesprite?" 

"Yeah, he—" 

Apparently, teleportation makes a noise. A soft one, like a folder full of paper hitting a carpeted floor, but it's still enough to get everyone's attention on the surprisingly blue guy who's just popped into existance next to Xavier. Poor guy looks like he's been through some shit in the last ten minutes or so—he's bleeding from several sets of slashes that've torn through his shirt and the skin beneath, dark hair obviously more disheveled than it started out, sharp teeth showing as he pants in either exhaustion or panic. 

Maybe both, actually, since he's got Davesprite latched onto him like a pit bull on a bear, right down to the bared teeth and soft growling. You're proud of the kid; not a lot of people understand the importance of holding on with both arms and legs, and how to do it without cutting off enough of their ride's airflow to start him panicking. 

Magneto raises an eyebrow. "Kurt, you seem to have lost a battle here." 

"Please just get him off of me." 

If you were in a lil' less pain or a lil' less punch-drunk, you'd probably be interested in the accent the guy's got going there. As things are, something about the tone—pleading and exasperated and fully aware of the innate ridiculousness of the situation—hits you as _funny_. 

Dave's eyes go wide and concerned when you double over and start laughing; a second later you feel both his hands and a second, smaller pair that obviously belong to Davesprite on your shoulders. And yeah, you should sit the fuck up and be an adult right now, but you know what? 

You have a fucking head injury and, at some point, you really do have to laugh.

* * *

**D:**

It takes a lot longer than you like to get Ambrose up off the floor and through the portal with Dave and Davesprite; as soon as they're through it dissolves back into the wall. Even though you know that's supposed to happen—Roxy can't keep two portals open and stable at the same time, not without putting a hell of a lot more strain on herself than you're willing to allow here, and Ambrose _does_ need to go to the fucking hospital, like, _now_—it's still vaguely anxiety-inducing. 

Hal and Dirk aren't worried about it at all, though. Or at least they don't look like they are, which you know very well is not the same thing...but it's not just blankness covering shit up that you're seeing from the two of them, it's _fury_ that Dirk's only sort of bothering to hide and Hal's not even trying to cover up at all. 

At least they're not acting on anything, though. 

As soon as you have that thought, Hal looks from you, to Dirk, says, "Forty seconds," and they both turn to Magneto and Xavier in that eerie synchronicity that means they're in total agreement about something. From all the other time you've seen it from them, that's bad. 

Fuck. "Hey—" 

"You need to understand something," Dirk says, perfectly calm, ignoring you and Hal and everything in the room but Xavier. 

"You fucked up." Hal's just as focused on Magneto as his twin is on Xavier, but his tone matches Dirk's perfectly; you're used to it and it's _still_ vaguely intimidating. "You really—" 

"—_really_ fucked up. You need to understand—" 

"—that however valuable you think Dave is—" 

"—however powerful you're assuming he might be, we're—" 

"—capable of making fucking with him not worth it." Hal smiles. It's an excuse to show teeth. What you really expect here is for him to go for his katana; what he actually does is to take a quick step forward, dissolving into a Hal-shaped mass of sparks that you know can't keep its shape on its own for too long. Not that he has too long to sustain it; half a heartbeat and he follows through on the motion he started before shifting, phasing through Magneto and moving past him quick enough that you don't really track it. 

God, you didn't know he could do that with anyone but Dirk. Not without killing them—and no, the old man's not dead. Visibly shaken, but not too much the worse for wear. You think. It's kind of hard to read the look on his face. 

As Hal reforms as a flesh and blood being, Dirk draws his katana from the dumbass back sheath he spent a week making, leveling the blade to point at Xavier's face. (You can't really blame the guy for rolling the chair back a few inches, especially when you take into account the electric sparks dancing down the length of the blade.) "This isn't aimed exclusively at either of you, of course." 

"It's definitely a blanket statement." Hal sidesteps around Mageneto, back to stand beside Dirk. "And anyone else you might be on speaking terms with. If you have a blacklist—" 

"—put the Striders on it. We don't like—" 

"—being _manipulated._" Electronic registers kick in on that last word; behind Xavier, Kurt jumps. 

"We don't like being owned, either," Dirk adds. "Deadpool filled us in on the kind of shit you get mutant kids into, Professor." (This is the first you've heard of that.) 

Despite having just had a sizable electric shock delivered to his whole fucking body and still having the threat of it happening again real and present and hanging over his head, Magneto has something to point out here. "I'm sure you realize that my goal—" 

"Nope. Shut up." Hal nods at Dirk, who instantly swings around to point the sword at Magneto instead of Xavier. "There's this thing called a 'phone.' Use it, dumbass." 

"Or don't." Dirk shrugs, a one-sided motion that doesn't affect the steadiness of his weapon at all. "What you did here? Don't fucking do that again. Ever." 

"We're not going to sink to the level of threatening you here, don't worry." Hal flashes that smile again, crossing his arms. Beside him, Dirk reaches back to slide his katana back into its case and mirrors him. "I mean, think about it. Do we really need to tell you what we'd do?" 

"It wouldn't be a threat even if we did," Dirk continues. "An ultimatum, maybe." 

"Or a promise. A very simple one..." 

"You fuck with any of us again, ever, and we destroy _everything._" 

That's...one hell of a promise. If it wasn't the last statement in this whole insane conversation, maybe it'd come across as at least a little ridiculous. However, the most valuable trait that your kids inherited from you is an impeccable sense of timing; Dirk gets that last word out, and the black ink of Roxy's portal opens again on the far wall. 

You want to laugh at how identical Dirk and Hal's posture is as they stalk over to the portal and disappear through it. Instead of doing that, you wave a slightly stupid-looking goodbye to the four people in the room and step through yourself. 

The last thing that you see is Xavier grimancing and yanking the helmet off to toss it at Magneto. Eh, they can work their own differences out; it sure ain't _your_ job.

* * *

_Hal:_

It's hours before you find a window where you're alone in the same room with Dirk, and even then it's just for a few moments. Still, that's enough to have the conversation the two of you need to have. 

"He heals." 

"Yeah." 

"You know what that means." 

"I'm not an _idiot._" 

"I know. I'm not either." 

The two of you stare at each other for a second or so. It's like looking in a mirror; you don't think anyone but you would know so exactly what the look on his face means, how the tiny tense lines around his mouth speak of the stress and worry and fear that both of you are feeling. 

Then, "There's not really a lot we can do." 

"True. Keep an eye on shit." 

"Bug his accounts. The ones we didn't clean out after Wade brought Dave back." 

"The ones we cleaned out, too. Just in case." 

"All his usernames. Every account." 

"Monitor it all. Nothing invasive." 

"Yeah. Nothing he'll see if he is, you know." 

Pause, again. 

"...we're overreacting." 

"Maybe." 

"He's dead." 

"Probably." 

"...fuck." 

"Yeah." 

Then D's stepping back into the room, and the conversation's over. 

For now, at least.


End file.
